FORTY years ago Nigel Swinford had a vision of creating a new orchestra.

He wanted to bring together a freelance group of professional musicians from all over the country to make a Christian contribution to the arts and music, at home and in Europe.

“It was quite a revolutionary thing at the time,” he explains at his home in Grange Park Road, Bromley Cross. “Until then, church music had only involved a church organ. The idea of musical instruments like the oboe, for example, playing in church was unheard of let alone a full orchestra!”

But, the idea resonated with many musicians – and later singers and dancers – and so the New English Orchestra was born.

At first, it was a collection of like-minded musicians prepared to play together on specific pieces in their own time. But, with the influence of Nigel Swinford – a talented music teacher and musician himself who both wrote and directed music – it swiftly grew into an orchestra of reknown, capable of playing anything.

Nigel was born in the little Gloucestershire town of Tetbury and grew up with three abiding interests: music, Christianity and cricket. He studied at the Royal Academy of Music, working on the Bach, Chopin and Prokofiev repertoire of concert pianists while at the same time keeping an enthusiasm for boogie and jazz.

He was living in Birmingham when he founded the New English Orchestra, with the help and support of a group of music colleagues and their friends and contacts. It started with a Feast of Praise in Birmingham Town Hall in 1976 but, like many visionary experiments, it took hold.

When he was appointed Head of Composition at Salford College – now part of Salford University – he moved with his wife, Carolyn, also a well-known music teacher, and daughters Lizzie and Catherine, then 14 and 10, to live in Bolton.

His university work involved forging the first honours degree course in Band Musicianship in Europe, which still thrives today. His spare time, though, was devoted to working with the BBC on religious and musical programmes like “Songs of Praise” and, with Carolyn, organising the music, events and trips for the NEO with Bolton now its “headquarters.”

The family started attending St Peter’s Church in Church Road, Halliwell, where they found kindred spirits and further empathetic support from the congregation.

It’s not hard to imagine the full effect of the sound of professional musicians and an impressive array of amateur singing talent in some of Europe’s most historic church buildings. Recalled Nigel: “Audiences proved appreciative and quite remarkable right from the beginning.”

Video footage taken in magnificent buildings in Salzburg in Austria and at the Pantheon in Rome reveal the rapt concentration and sheer pleasure of people of all ages and nationalities simply enjoying this celestial sound.

The 50 or so musicians, plus singers and dancers, have performed everything from Handel’s Messiah to Fats Waller’s Honeysuckle Rose amid the fabulous acoustics of these historic ecclesiastical buildings and with a contagious enthusiasm.

The NEO has now performed in Salzburg 25 times, six times in Rome to a truly ecumenical audience and even in St Petersburg just after it had emerged from being Leningrad. The sheer logistics alone of getting this self-funded orchestra around the world is itself truly daunting.

The happy legacy of the NEO, however, lies not only in the pleasure given to international audiences but in the couples who have met through the orchestra. Many of their children, like the Swinford’s own soprano daughter Lizzie, have since been involved in the orchestra as the second generation.

Nigel is now 70, though, and he and Carolyn feel the time is right to end the NEO, which will happen with a farewell concert at St Peter’s Church on Saturday, April 16.

So, has the orchestra achieved Nigel’s early vision? “Yes, I think so,” he smiles, acknowledging how this gentle evangelism has spread so effectively through music. “I do think that in many ways it will still carry on. And who can say what the future will bring?”